Neenish tart
Australian tart with colorful icing
A neenish tart (or neenish cake) is a tart made with a pastry base and a filling consisting of sweet gelatine-set cream, mock cream, icing sugar paste, or lemon and sweetened condensed milk mixture, with dried icing on the top of the tart in two colours. The addition of a layer of raspberry jam is a common recipe variation. The colours used for the icing are usually some combination of brown, white, and pink. They are almost exclusively sized as individual servings, 60–80 mm in diameter. The tart was originally created in Australia and is mainly found there, alongside New Zealand and the Falkland Islands.
The origin of the name "neenish" is unknown. A column in the Sydney Morning Herald attributed the name to a woman named Ruby Neenish, but this was later revealed to be a prank. Alternative names such as nenische (recorded in 1929) and nienich (recorded in 1935) suggest a German origin, although neenish was known before the alternatives, suggesting these names were to give a "continental" flavour to the tart.
"Nenish cakes" appear in Sydney newspaper advertisements as early as 1895, and a reference to neenish tarts is found in a recipe in the Sydney Mail in November 1901. A recipe published in Launceston's Daily Telegraph in January 1903 is very similar.
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